It begins with “wonderful, beautiful things, which you would expect from someone whose PhD is in English literature,” Opikokew Wajuntah recalled. It ends with, “and sometimes you just drive each other nuts.”

For those close to her, Episkenew was funny and warm — qualities that endeared her to her students and colleagues.

“She’d tell a joke when she was talking serious,” said Clayton Episkenew, her partner of 30 years. “She was really attractive in that way. … She pulled you into her little nook and she kept you.”

Jo-Ann Episkenew was an educator and an advocate for improving indigenous health, poverty and homelessness. She was an author.

Just last week, she was awarded an Indspire Award for education.

She was a mother of 13, a grandmother, a wife and a friend.

Jo-Ann Episkenew with some of her grandchildren (from left) Paulina, Asher, Ella and Mia.

Episkenew died early Thursday morning, her organs failing due to a three-week pneumonia. She was 63.

“It’s like losing seven people at once because she just plays so many roles in everyone’s life,” said Opikokew Wajuntah, Episkenew’s colleague at the University of Regina’s Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre (IPHRC) and a former student.

Episkenew was a lifelong bookworm, which led to her becoming an English professor.

While living northwest of Prince Albert, she’d have to hitchhike for groceries and would return with shopping bags full of library books.

She would read eight or 10 hours a day, “everything,” Clayton recalls.

He remembers an ice fishing trip to Mission Lake. During his six hours on the ice, she was in their camper van, polishing off four books.

“She wanted knowledge and knowledge and more knowledge,” said Clayton.

Little more than a year ago, Episkenew spoke about her life for a Leader-Post feature. She was just named the 2015 YWCA Women of Distinction Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

She credited her children for inspiring that achievement.

“My kids were the motivator for me to go and get an education. Everything I do is hopefully to show them that they can do stuff too. My grandkids,” said Episkenew.

When her daughter asked ‘how old do I have to be to get my own welfare cheque?’ I almost lost my mind,” Episkenew said. She enrolled in college the next day, which led to a clerk job at SaskTel.

“I quickly realized that if I work really hard, I might get to be a clerk 4 someday,” she said with a wry smile. “That was not doing it for me.

“I didn’t want to die without ever having gave it my best shot.”

Episkenew returned to school, and ultimately earned three degrees.

Clayton was along for the ride, literally — along for international conferences in Scotland, Germany, Poland and Hawaii — and figuratively.

“My poor husband had to listen to every damn page of my thesis you know and he’s a welder,” she said.

Episkenew taught literature and was dean of English at First Nations University, where she helped develop a course in residential schools literature.

That’s where Opikokew Wajuntah first met her.

“It’s the first time that many indigenous students see an indigenous professor at the front of the room talking about something that has touched most of us so personally,” said Opikokew Wajuntah. It was “very empowering.”

The student soon became a colleague, after Episkenew helped create the IPHRC in 2010.

Her PhD thesis was on indigenous literature as a way of critiquing and healing from public policy.

“Residential school was a policy of people thinking, ‘well, we can fix them.’ The Gradual Civilization of Indian Tribes Act was how we could fix them. Yeah, none of them have worked,” said Episkenew.

“If you don’t have aboriginal people in communities represented in the development of things, then you’re just going to keep having poor public policy resulting in poor outcomes resulting in more policy, ad nauseum.”

Episkenew was a “mentor (to) all these generations of indigenous researchers” at the IPHRC, said Opikokew Wajuntah.

Though she was once afraid of public speaking, Episkenew built a reputation as an expert in indigenous health and policy, participating on health boards and helping create government policy.

She credited others for her success.

“I am not living in isolation here. I am part of all of these people who really sustain me.”

Episkenew’s family is planning a memorial, but details have yet to be determined.

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